This chapter examines language ideologies and political discourse of the bilingual, indigenous Polynesian community of Easter Island, Chile, where the local Rapa Nui language has in the past been ...
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This chapter examines language ideologies and political discourse of the bilingual, indigenous Polynesian community of Easter Island, Chile, where the local Rapa Nui language has in the past been considerably marginalized by Spanish. It details how Rapa Nui speakers came to challenge this situation, first by pushing syncretic Rapa Nui–Spanish speech styles into public and political domains, and more recently, by constructing purist Rapa Nui speech styles. The chapter argues that the Rapa Nui deploy syncretic and purist speech styles as linguistic registers in political discourse to perform stances, and are voicing different but complimentary sets of values—those of democratic participation, and those of primordialism and ethnic boundary construction. The case study illustrates the ways in which the users of an endangered ethnolinguistic minority language have contributed to revalorizing and maintaining their language by establishing new linguistic registers, increasing the linguistic heterogeneity of their language.Less

Linguistic Purism in Rapa Nui Political Discourse

Miki Makihara

Published in print: 2007-10-11

This chapter examines language ideologies and political discourse of the bilingual, indigenous Polynesian community of Easter Island, Chile, where the local Rapa Nui language has in the past been considerably marginalized by Spanish. It details how Rapa Nui speakers came to challenge this situation, first by pushing syncretic Rapa Nui–Spanish speech styles into public and political domains, and more recently, by constructing purist Rapa Nui speech styles. The chapter argues that the Rapa Nui deploy syncretic and purist speech styles as linguistic registers in political discourse to perform stances, and are voicing different but complimentary sets of values—those of democratic participation, and those of primordialism and ethnic boundary construction. The case study illustrates the ways in which the users of an endangered ethnolinguistic minority language have contributed to revalorizing and maintaining their language by establishing new linguistic registers, increasing the linguistic heterogeneity of their language.

In the 1990s, Rapanui discourse turned from an emphasis on equality within the Chilean nation-state to one on cultural difference. In 1993 a Ley Indígena was issued in response to the “indigenous ...
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In the 1990s, Rapanui discourse turned from an emphasis on equality within the Chilean nation-state to one on cultural difference. In 1993 a Ley Indígena was issued in response to the “indigenous problem” after the return to democracy in Chile in 1990. In reaction to the Ley Indígena a split of the Elders’ Council occurred in 1994, mainly caused by contesting visions about land and territory. In the context of the Ley Indígena a special commission was created for Rapa Nui, the Comisión de Desarrollo (Development Commission).The incompatibility between giving private land deeds to individuals and the Rapanui concept of kaiŋa (land as territory) is being played out in this commission, whose task is to supervise the distribution of plots of land to individual Rapanui. The chapter continues with a discussion of the difference between Rapanui customary law versus Chilean western law and the land distribution policy of Chilean institutions, resulting in the complex process of “returning” land, albeit not the territory to the Rapanui people, during the last few years. I then describe how in 2000 and 2002 the Chilean government created two commissions meant to correct the historical relationship between Chile and Rapa Nui. The chapter ends with an analysis of current discussions about a Special Statute which is to govern the Special Territory created in 2007.Less

The Road to Self-determination

Riet Delsing

Published in print: 2015-05-31

In the 1990s, Rapanui discourse turned from an emphasis on equality within the Chilean nation-state to one on cultural difference. In 1993 a Ley Indígena was issued in response to the “indigenous problem” after the return to democracy in Chile in 1990. In reaction to the Ley Indígena a split of the Elders’ Council occurred in 1994, mainly caused by contesting visions about land and territory. In the context of the Ley Indígena a special commission was created for Rapa Nui, the Comisión de Desarrollo (Development Commission).The incompatibility between giving private land deeds to individuals and the Rapanui concept of kaiŋa (land as territory) is being played out in this commission, whose task is to supervise the distribution of plots of land to individual Rapanui. The chapter continues with a discussion of the difference between Rapanui customary law versus Chilean western law and the land distribution policy of Chilean institutions, resulting in the complex process of “returning” land, albeit not the territory to the Rapanui people, during the last few years. I then describe how in 2000 and 2002 the Chilean government created two commissions meant to correct the historical relationship between Chile and Rapa Nui. The chapter ends with an analysis of current discussions about a Special Statute which is to govern the Special Territory created in 2007.

The world’s fascination with Rapa Nui and its growing tourist industry is discussed. Rapa Nui has been clouded in mystery and romanticism ever since its “discovery” by the West. Both the enigma and ...
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The world’s fascination with Rapa Nui and its growing tourist industry is discussed. Rapa Nui has been clouded in mystery and romanticism ever since its “discovery” by the West. Both the enigma and globalized image of the moai, and the “living culture” are ingredients of the Rapanui tourist product. In a section about examples of outsiders’ symbolic appropriation of Rapanui traditional culture, I discuss European visual artists and European and American esoteric writers who take their inspiration from the moai and other Rapanui cultural expressions. American and Chilean movies and TV series have been base on the island as well. I also show how the Rapanui themselves have a firm grip on this tourist market. This is followed by various vignettes of the experience of individual tourists on the island: the president of the Czech Republic Václav Havel, the Spanish monarchs, French Concorde tourists, a Dutch seafarer and an Italian playwright. I then discuss the huge impact of tourism on the island. Not only has it become the main source of income, it has also effected its ecology and commodified its traditional culture.Less

Rapa Nui as Fantasy and Commodity

Riet Delsing

Published in print: 2015-05-31

The world’s fascination with Rapa Nui and its growing tourist industry is discussed. Rapa Nui has been clouded in mystery and romanticism ever since its “discovery” by the West. Both the enigma and globalized image of the moai, and the “living culture” are ingredients of the Rapanui tourist product. In a section about examples of outsiders’ symbolic appropriation of Rapanui traditional culture, I discuss European visual artists and European and American esoteric writers who take their inspiration from the moai and other Rapanui cultural expressions. American and Chilean movies and TV series have been base on the island as well. I also show how the Rapanui themselves have a firm grip on this tourist market. This is followed by various vignettes of the experience of individual tourists on the island: the president of the Czech Republic Václav Havel, the Spanish monarchs, French Concorde tourists, a Dutch seafarer and an Italian playwright. I then discuss the huge impact of tourism on the island. Not only has it become the main source of income, it has also effected its ecology and commodified its traditional culture.

This chapter illustrates how the meaning of the indigenous Rapa Nui language on Easter Island is established in ritual practices that living Rapa Nui people conduct to communicate with the ancestral ...
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This chapter illustrates how the meaning of the indigenous Rapa Nui language on Easter Island is established in ritual practices that living Rapa Nui people conduct to communicate with the ancestral spirit world. Through language studies with an indigenous teacher, the author discovers that his interpretation of Rapa Nui culture, language, and politics has become radically recontextualized. Moreover, this chapter argues that Rapa Nui language speakers, ultimately, are entangled in a political struggle for indigenous place against settler colonial discourse normalizing Easter Island as a Chilean space. The discursive practice of Rapa Nui language, as opposed to Chilean Spanish, will likely continue to be an important cultural resource for the Rapa Nui people to maintain an identity and “sense of place” distinguished from Chile.Less

Talking with the Moai on Easter Island : Placing Rapa Nui Language

Forrest Wade Young

Published in print: 2015-04-30

This chapter illustrates how the meaning of the indigenous Rapa Nui language on Easter Island is established in ritual practices that living Rapa Nui people conduct to communicate with the ancestral spirit world. Through language studies with an indigenous teacher, the author discovers that his interpretation of Rapa Nui culture, language, and politics has become radically recontextualized. Moreover, this chapter argues that Rapa Nui language speakers, ultimately, are entangled in a political struggle for indigenous place against settler colonial discourse normalizing Easter Island as a Chilean space. The discursive practice of Rapa Nui language, as opposed to Chilean Spanish, will likely continue to be an important cultural resource for the Rapa Nui people to maintain an identity and “sense of place” distinguished from Chile.

Since the 1990s, Rapanui cultural revival takes place in the context of regional (Polynesian) cultural revival. I first describe the participation of Rapa Nui in the Polynesian language conferences ...
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Since the 1990s, Rapanui cultural revival takes place in the context of regional (Polynesian) cultural revival. I first describe the participation of Rapa Nui in the Polynesian language conferences organized by the Polynesian Language Forum between 1991 and 2003. Its fourteen members discussed issues like teaching methods, vocabularies and contacts with respective states. In 2000 the conference was held on Rapa Nui. Another gathering in which Rapanui participate with great enthusiasm is the Festival of Pacific Arts, hosted every four years by a different country since 1972. Rapa Nui was in charge of the opening ceremony in 2008. This is followed by a case study of the visit of Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hokule’a to Rapa Nui in 1999, in the context of the revival of Polynesian voyaging. I offer a detailed account of the visit of Hokule’a and a host of Hawaiian visitors to the island. Many cultural and socio-political exchanges took place between Rapanui and Hawaiians during this event.Less

The Polynesian Homeland : A Sea of Islands

Riet Delsing

Published in print: 2015-05-31

Since the 1990s, Rapanui cultural revival takes place in the context of regional (Polynesian) cultural revival. I first describe the participation of Rapa Nui in the Polynesian language conferences organized by the Polynesian Language Forum between 1991 and 2003. Its fourteen members discussed issues like teaching methods, vocabularies and contacts with respective states. In 2000 the conference was held on Rapa Nui. Another gathering in which Rapanui participate with great enthusiasm is the Festival of Pacific Arts, hosted every four years by a different country since 1972. Rapa Nui was in charge of the opening ceremony in 2008. This is followed by a case study of the visit of Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hokule’a to Rapa Nui in 1999, in the context of the revival of Polynesian voyaging. I offer a detailed account of the visit of Hokule’a and a host of Hawaiian visitors to the island. Many cultural and socio-political exchanges took place between Rapanui and Hawaiians during this event.

Starting with an examination of the Rapanui and Spanish versions of the annexation treaty of 1888, I offer an analysis of how Chileans and Rapanui view the issue of Chilean Sovereignty over the ...
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Starting with an examination of the Rapanui and Spanish versions of the annexation treaty of 1888, I offer an analysis of how Chileans and Rapanui view the issue of Chilean Sovereignty over the island and how this can be interpreted according to contemporary international law. After a review of the first years of Chilean colonization, I then describe how Chile leased the island to Williamson, Balfour and Company, a British early multinational, which created the Compañía Explotadora de la Isla de Pascua and turned the island into a sheep farm until the early 1950s. The Chilean state was represented in these years by its Navy. The Rapanui challenged these colonial impositions by acts of resistance, notably in 1914, when a leader by the name of María Angata staged a rebellion. The reeling and dealing between the various actors: the Rapanui, the Company and the Navy, in the first half of the 20th century, are examined next. In 1933 the Chilean state confirmed its sovereignty over Rapa Nui and its geopolitical interest in the island, by declaring the whole island to be Chilean public land.Less

Chilean Colonization and Rapanui Resilience

Riet Delsing

Published in print: 2015-05-31

Starting with an examination of the Rapanui and Spanish versions of the annexation treaty of 1888, I offer an analysis of how Chileans and Rapanui view the issue of Chilean Sovereignty over the island and how this can be interpreted according to contemporary international law. After a review of the first years of Chilean colonization, I then describe how Chile leased the island to Williamson, Balfour and Company, a British early multinational, which created the Compañía Explotadora de la Isla de Pascua and turned the island into a sheep farm until the early 1950s. The Chilean state was represented in these years by its Navy. The Rapanui challenged these colonial impositions by acts of resistance, notably in 1914, when a leader by the name of María Angata staged a rebellion. The reeling and dealing between the various actors: the Rapanui, the Company and the Navy, in the first half of the 20th century, are examined next. In 1933 the Chilean state confirmed its sovereignty over Rapa Nui and its geopolitical interest in the island, by declaring the whole island to be Chilean public land.

This chapter argues that language ideologies and practices mediate consequences of cultural contact over time. Focusing on the Pacific, from Rapa Nui to West Papua, it highlights complex histories ...
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This chapter argues that language ideologies and practices mediate consequences of cultural contact over time. Focusing on the Pacific, from Rapa Nui to West Papua, it highlights complex histories and variation of cultural encounters, crossings and re-crossings; cultural and political conditions of linguistic research across different colonial and postcolonial phases; the linguistic diversity of Pacific Island societies, and the social centrality of talk and other verbal practices such as literacy, in them. The chapter emphasizes variation in linguistic and cultural change, debates about modernization, missionization, and language endangerment and revitalization, and suggests strategies for understanding the dynamics of such changes by identifying key agents, institutional sites, and linguistic forms, within a wider historical and global conjuncture.Less

Cultural Processes and Linguistic Mediations : Pacific Explorations

Miki MakiharaBambi B. Schieffelin

Published in print: 2007-10-11

This chapter argues that language ideologies and practices mediate consequences of cultural contact over time. Focusing on the Pacific, from Rapa Nui to West Papua, it highlights complex histories and variation of cultural encounters, crossings and re-crossings; cultural and political conditions of linguistic research across different colonial and postcolonial phases; the linguistic diversity of Pacific Island societies, and the social centrality of talk and other verbal practices such as literacy, in them. The chapter emphasizes variation in linguistic and cultural change, debates about modernization, missionization, and language endangerment and revitalization, and suggests strategies for understanding the dynamics of such changes by identifying key agents, institutional sites, and linguistic forms, within a wider historical and global conjuncture.

In the first chapter of the second part of this book entitled “Polynesian cultural politics and global imaginaries”, Rapanui resistance against the Chilean state is explored, first through a Rapanui ...
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In the first chapter of the second part of this book entitled “Polynesian cultural politics and global imaginaries”, Rapanui resistance against the Chilean state is explored, first through a Rapanui organization called the Parlamento Rapanui, constituted in 2001 and mirrored after Chilean state institutions (Parliament, Ministries etc.). The creation of the Parlamento shows how some Rapanui are solidifying their thrust for autonomy and self-determination. I describe the circumstances around its creation and its policies and actions on the island, in Polynesia and elsewhere. This is followed by a description of a few isolated acts of performed resistance, which can be characterized as bodily statements of discontent. I show how the Rapanui protest against various Chilean impositions in their daily lives and how the Chilean state and its institutions react to these acts of protest. This chapter serves as a transition to the following chapters in that it demonstrates how some Rapanui take the nation-state as their referent while simultaneously reaching across to other realms, other Polynesians and other ways of being in the world.Less

Rapanui Appropriations and Resistance

Riet Delsing

Published in print: 2015-05-31

In the first chapter of the second part of this book entitled “Polynesian cultural politics and global imaginaries”, Rapanui resistance against the Chilean state is explored, first through a Rapanui organization called the Parlamento Rapanui, constituted in 2001 and mirrored after Chilean state institutions (Parliament, Ministries etc.). The creation of the Parlamento shows how some Rapanui are solidifying their thrust for autonomy and self-determination. I describe the circumstances around its creation and its policies and actions on the island, in Polynesia and elsewhere. This is followed by a description of a few isolated acts of performed resistance, which can be characterized as bodily statements of discontent. I show how the Rapanui protest against various Chilean impositions in their daily lives and how the Chilean state and its institutions react to these acts of protest. This chapter serves as a transition to the following chapters in that it demonstrates how some Rapanui take the nation-state as their referent while simultaneously reaching across to other realms, other Polynesians and other ways of being in the world.

This ethnography examines the colonization of the Pacific island of Rapa Nui/Easter Island by the Latin American country of Chile. It also discusses the Rapanui people’s growing emphasis on cultural ...
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This ethnography examines the colonization of the Pacific island of Rapa Nui/Easter Island by the Latin American country of Chile. It also discusses the Rapanui people’s growing emphasis on cultural difference. The first part, entitled “Challenging the nation-state”, gives an historical account of Chile’s political relationship with the island, from the moment of annexation in 1888 up to the present day. In the second part, “Polynesian cultural politics and global imaginaries”, I describe various contemporary forms of cultural politics. To express their difference, the Rapanui are increasingly engaging in cultural performances such as sculpting, dancing, body painting and other cultural expressions, as well as a yearly festival. They are also revitalizing their Polynesian language and traditional concepts of land and territory, and strengthening contacts with other Polynesians and the international community. This emphasis on cultural politics creates tensions between the Rapanui--who increasingly claim their right to self-determination as a people--and the Chilean nation-state, which insists on its supposed rights to sovereignty over the island. Moreover, I discuss how the global fascination with Rapa Nui has resulted in a blooming tourist industry, which commodifies Rapanui difference and creates a possibility to loosen economic and, potentially, political ties with Chile. The realms of the cultural and the political have thus become entangled in subtle but important ways.Less

Riet Delsing

Published in print: 2015-05-31

This ethnography examines the colonization of the Pacific island of Rapa Nui/Easter Island by the Latin American country of Chile. It also discusses the Rapanui people’s growing emphasis on cultural difference. The first part, entitled “Challenging the nation-state”, gives an historical account of Chile’s political relationship with the island, from the moment of annexation in 1888 up to the present day. In the second part, “Polynesian cultural politics and global imaginaries”, I describe various contemporary forms of cultural politics. To express their difference, the Rapanui are increasingly engaging in cultural performances such as sculpting, dancing, body painting and other cultural expressions, as well as a yearly festival. They are also revitalizing their Polynesian language and traditional concepts of land and territory, and strengthening contacts with other Polynesians and the international community. This emphasis on cultural politics creates tensions between the Rapanui--who increasingly claim their right to self-determination as a people--and the Chilean nation-state, which insists on its supposed rights to sovereignty over the island. Moreover, I discuss how the global fascination with Rapa Nui has resulted in a blooming tourist industry, which commodifies Rapanui difference and creates a possibility to loosen economic and, potentially, political ties with Chile. The realms of the cultural and the political have thus become entangled in subtle but important ways.

This chapter considers the immensity of Polynesia, a vast triangular region of the Pacific defined by the archipelago of Hawai'i north of the equator, by Rapa Nui, that tiny dot on the map across the ...
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This chapter considers the immensity of Polynesia, a vast triangular region of the Pacific defined by the archipelago of Hawai'i north of the equator, by Rapa Nui, that tiny dot on the map across the equator far to the southeast which is known to the outside world as Easter Island, and on the southwestern side of the Pacific by Aotearoa, a pair of huge continental fragments and small offshore islands that now form the country of New Zealand. Also basic to the problem of comprehending how the islands of the Polynesian triangle were first discovered and settled was the fundamental contrast between the oceanic view of the world held by the Polynesians, and the continental thinking of those first European visitors to Polynesia who were so surprised to learn that the islands they found in the vast stretches of the Pacific already had been discovered and settled.Less

Without Ships or Compass

Ben Finney

Published in print: 1994-11-09

This chapter considers the immensity of Polynesia, a vast triangular region of the Pacific defined by the archipelago of Hawai'i north of the equator, by Rapa Nui, that tiny dot on the map across the equator far to the southeast which is known to the outside world as Easter Island, and on the southwestern side of the Pacific by Aotearoa, a pair of huge continental fragments and small offshore islands that now form the country of New Zealand. Also basic to the problem of comprehending how the islands of the Polynesian triangle were first discovered and settled was the fundamental contrast between the oceanic view of the world held by the Polynesians, and the continental thinking of those first European visitors to Polynesia who were so surprised to learn that the islands they found in the vast stretches of the Pacific already had been discovered and settled.